Current Member - Sandra Bouwhuis
EGI Visitor
Sandra Bouwhuis
Details
Name: Sandra Bouwhuis
Position: Visitor
Email: A.H.J.Bouwhuis@rug.nl
Autobiography
In 2005, I graduated from the University of Groningen, after completing the topmaster programme 'Evolutionary biology'. Within this programme, I had the opportunity to explore the large field of evolutionary ecology in three 6-month projects. My first project was hosted by the Netherlands Institute of Ecology and focused on the link between climate change and population declines in the pied flycatcher. Afterwards, I broadened my horizon with a more physiologically oriented project on the growth and energetics of the endangered African penguin on Robben Island, South Africa. Finally, I tried to experimentally unravel whether oxidative stress could be the mediator of a trade-off between sexual ornamentation and immune functioning in domestic fowl at the University of Wageningen.
From these projects I discovered that my main research interest lies in the integration of proximate and ultimate questions in the area of evolutionary ecology, and that nothing beats the pleasure of working with free-living birds.
Research Activities
Currently, I aim to combine the study of physiology and behavioural ecology in an evolutionary context in a PhD project entitled 'The evolutionary ecology of basal metabolic rate and ageing'. This project is based on the old and intuitively attractive 'rate-of-living theory', which argues that living fast leads to high levels of energy expenditure, much wear-and-tear and early death. To test this idea, I study the link between lifestyle, energetics and ageing in the free-living great tits of Wytham Woods.
Lifestyle: The popular translation of the rate-of-living theory is 'live fast, die young'. In the great tits of Wytham Woods we can test this idea quite literally, as some birds are known to live faster than others. These individual differences are quantified using behavioural assays in which exploration rates of a novel environment are scored. Such exploration rates are thought to reflect overall differences in personality between birds. Besides personality, more conventional measures of great tit lifestyle will include reproductive decisions, effort and success.
Energetics: Traditional tests of the rate-of-living theory have mainly been performed using basal metabolic rate as a currency for energy expenditure. Basal metabolic rate is defined as the energy expenditure of inactive, postadsorptive, nonreproductive adult individuals measured during the inactive phase of the circadian cycle and within the thermoneutral zone. It is therefore thought to reflect the minimum amount of energy an animal uses to maintain itself. Although basal metabolic rate has been measured for many decades, little is known about its sources of variation or functional significance. Acquiring knowledge on this therefore is crucial to allow predictions concerning the rate-of-living theory, and a major goal of my project.
Ageing: The process of ageing is likely to start with physiological deterioration, which then leads to the occurrence of senescence, the decline in reproductive performance and survival probability with age. In this project, I will investigate telomere shortening as a sign of physiological deterioration. Telomeres are short, tandemly repeated DNA sequences that cap the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes and protect their integrity. They shorten with each cell division and may therefore be read as a biological clock. Indeed, telomeres have been found to be shorter in older birds and the rate of telomere length loss to correlate negatively with lifespan. As there is more to ageing then death, I aim to compare rates of telomere shortening with rates of senescence in individual birds.
This PhD project is supervised by Simon Verhulst, Ben Sheldon and Marcel Visser.
Selected Recent Papers
Both, C., Bouwhuis, S., Lessells, C.M. & Visser, M.E. 2006. Climate change and population declines in a long-distance migratory bird. Nature 441, 81-83.
